Offices all over the world are commonly found near large cities, with a long standing history of being in or around the CBD (Central Business District). It used to be this way because it was the most convenient for people visiting, and the location meant easy communication with other businesses in a similar or target sector. This is no longer the case, and all over the world you can see open office space available for rent in the middle of big cities; businesses are moving out.

Now, alot of businesses still thrive in the centre of large cities, from retail to transport to hotels, but offices are not one of these. With the move onto paperless offices, and great transport links to the suburbs in most cities, it’s an easy transition for an office to move away from the busiest areas.

City centre offices are always the most expensive available, with their prices hiked up by their location alone. Office buildings are prime real estate, and cost alot to build, so developers want to get the most for their money by charging high prices. Unfortunately for these developers, offices simply don’t need to be in city centres any more.

The move to paperless offices has had many effects, but one main one is that, with ease of communication, you do not need to be close to other businesses. You can instantly phone any other business, and emailing is much faster and more reliable than postage in modern society. Even transportation is easy outside of the city, with most large office parks made close to major transport links like motorways and train lines.

Large office parks can provide over 4-6x as much space for the money than inner city office spaces. With this kind of value saving, it’s hard to see why any business would still be working out of a city-office today. A spacious environment is valuable to any business, if only for keeping staff happy. This saving on rent can be directly applied to the customer base, providing the clients with savings from your services over an inner city branch.

One often underestimated part of having an out-of-city office is a basic one; parking. This might seem like a minor thing, but for both staff and visiting clients this converts into massive week to week savings. With the great transport links out of cities, most people tend to drive to the office, and saving £20-40 a week from inner city parking is a great asset to have. Even the car parks are bigger, so everybody will have a parking space; something rarely found in small city offices.

Utilities are another major one for businesses, with outer city utilities such as gas, electricity, and internet often being markedly cheaper in less built up areas. Even insurance is cheaper out of city centres, with business insurance dropping by up to 60% when a business moves to an office park.

There are many advantages to moving out of a city, and most of them can be seen especially well in university towns/cities. In these areas, older office buildings are often bought to be converted into student accommodation. While often being an expensive conversion, relying on the university increasing attendance over time, it does end up working out for the property developer from the constant revenue year by year. This always means that large university cities have fewer open office buildings to move into, so many newer businesses move out to office parks. It’s a perpetuating cycle which shows no sign of slowing down, and means that only well-established and older office businesses have a city based premises.

It’s a good idea for businesses to move out of the city, if only to save themselves money and to keep them in the black. The older concept of inner city office space is only really a factor for rich businesses, and those with rent controlled leases. The savings out of city are worth the extra commute.

Managing your business finances is vital to the success of the business. The problem is that many small business owners do not know how to manage their business finances as this is very different to personal finance. If you are unsure, it is recommended that you ask for help and advice from a professional, but there are other pieces of advice that you can also use.

Separate Your Personal And Business Accounts

When you start a small business, it is tempting to simply use your personal bank account for the business. This is actually something that you should avoid because it can cause major problems in the long-run. It is better to start a business bank account as soon as you start your business.

This ensures that you always know how much money your business has available. You will also never be tempted to use of the business money for personal reasons because it is in a different account. Having separate accounts will also make it easier to determine your tax.

Get Qualified Financial Professionals

There are 2 financial professionals that you need to have working with your small business. The first is a bookkeeper and the second is an accountant. Unless you have financial training, you should not try to complete the accounts of your business on your own. You also do not have to hire a full-time bookkeeper or accountant as there are many professionals that offer their services remotely.

A qualified bookkeeper is essential because they will take care of the daily record keeping of transactions for the business. While you can get software to help with this, there are certain aspects of bookkeeping that you will not be aware of. You will also save a lot of time by hiring someone so you can focus on other aspects of the business.

A qualified accountant will be able to help you with your overall finances and will be able to submit your tax to HMRC. Accountants also help you with other aspects of your business such as certain decisions which will impact your cash flow.

Monitor And Measure Your Financial Performance

While hiring professionals to help you with your finance tasks is important, you should also keep track of everything. Monitoring and measuring your financial performance allows you to determine how well your business is actually doing and for law firms for example, this is where legal accounting software from Quill will definitely help. There is no point in running a business if you are not making any money and are not aware of this fact.

Each financial year, you should set goals for your business in terms of the financial performance. You can then measure your progress towards these goals. When monitoring your financial performance, you will also be able to see what business activities yield the best returns.

There is a lot of advice that you can use to manage your small business finances. The most important piece of information is to hire professionals to help you as they can advise you in the future based on their understanding of your business.

Marketing through a magazine is similar to advertising through a newspaper; trying to make an eye catching but effective advert geared towards a specific target audience. The main difference here lies in just how specific you can be with magazine advertising, as opposed to the blanket appeal method of newspapers. Magazines generally have much more space for adverts than newspapers, but the quality expected is much higher throughout.

There are thousands of different magazines available to advertise in, as opposed to the few dozen available papers’. The great part about this is that there is always a best magazine to advertise in, rather than a few possible ones for papers. People buy a magazine to know more about a certain topic, rather than get an updated general knowledge from news. The exception to this is placing an advert within a magazine which comes as an insert to a paper, such as the Mail on Sunday or Sunday Times.

As with all forms of advertising, the most important first step is market analysis. Let’s use some examples; a hair care product and a motorcycle garage. Now these two may share certain target markets, but that niche would be very small; bikers’ who need specific haircare. Because these do not share much of an audience, it would be best to advertise them in different places; seems simple, right? Now the motorcycle garage may have a few key target demographics to be considered; locals, people who would travel for their niche service, and obviously bike enthusiasts. To advertise for this, they would likely run a full or half page advertisement within local papers, and in specialist bike magazines. Even classic car magazines could be a target for this. But by far and away one of the best things that could be done would be to run an articular advertisement; a page or few with an interview or overview of their services, and a contact or address. By making themselves into a reputable and interesting source of information within the community, they are becoming a recognised brand, and people are likely to visit or use them.

Haircare products would be marketed differently to this, but with some of the same key features. This type of product is best shown visually, with a before and after picture, photo of the product, or endorsement. The key here is that you need this advert to stand out, rather than entice people into reading. The market is saturated with this type of product, seen in womens health, glamour, and social magazines constantly throughout the year. Placing this advert in a magazine such as Vogue or Cosmo would still be preferable to in a Harley Davidson magazine, but it will still be ineffective if it’s not eye-catching.

The placement of an advert within a magazine is also a major consideration, which is not as important within a newspaper. Many magazines today are crammed with full-page adverts, and it can be difficult to decide where yours would be most effective. In general, advertising within the middle of a magazine is most effective, as people will have to skim over those sections multiple times to view the content of the magazine. Adverts at the front used to be one of the best options, but with oversaturation in the market many of these are simply ignored. Magazines such as Cosmo typically have 10-20 pages of adverts before the first page of content, or even the contents. Similarly, the back pages are often overlooked as simply having too many adverts. In an ideal world, your advert would be placed between relevant content; 4 pages on haircare treatments with an advert for straighteners would be perfect.

With some magazines, it simply may not be economical to advertise your product there, and your advert needs something to stand out. Offers, free samples, or information repositories are the best bet, but they all come at a cost. Take mens aftershave for example, having a full page advert for the product with a classic picture and product outline may seem good, but it does not convey your product. The best way of advertising for this would be a small sample, as you cannot convey smell through words, but this adds alot to the costs. As always, a risk:reward analysis is needed.

Businesses of all sizes should always have an accountant to handle both day to day activities, and monitor growth of the company over time. With the advent of various, albeit powerful, software packages such as QuickBooks, many businesses do not feel the need to hire an accountant at all, and choose to handle the duties themselves. Without the proper training and experience, this is a recipe for disaster which could’ve been easily avoided. When a business chooses to not hire an accountant, then the risk is entirely in their hands, and ultimately most businesses understand that a high quality accountant is an investment.

An accountant offers a combination of knowledge and insight to any business that can end up proving invaluable. During the early phases of a businesss growth, a financial advisor is an integral part in assessing the business model, and maximising initial revenue. Setting up a business is no mean feat, and is the cause of confusion and stress for many budding entrepreneurs, while those with an accountant always have a clear picture of what their targets are; a crucial step which is difficult for businesses to analyse themselves on. Even the basic steps can be handled by your accountant, from registering a company or property to the appropriate authorities, to invoicing and details margins. Try to think of hiring an accountant as a tool to be utilized; the quality of your accountant can make your work go incredibly smoothly.

With the day-to-day operations of any business, it is difficult for everyone to keep track of their progress and needs without an accountant. By having a clear picture of the company’s past, it is much easier to see where any problems lie, and compensate for them. Though you as a business owner may not know how much profitability is produced by stock or services, an accountant can easily show you this, making future planning much easier on the whole company. A great accountant will be able to forecast the future of your business for you, freeing you and your staff up to do the day to day activities, without any uncertainty.

The vast training an accountant receives to become qualified never goes to waste in any business, with them often able to provide valuable insight into future opportunities. One such facet that most professionals will be able to relate to is the profitability of specific services. For example, say a company has a diverse portfolio of products; each of these products will have a different cost and a different value. In this example, though the company may sell X thousand units of a product, the profit margin may be slim (10-20%), and a less popular product which sells X hundred units, may be a much more profitable place to invest marketing into. This type of in depth and complex analysis of a company’s sales figures can only be carried out by someone with accounting knowledge.

The final key area an accountant proves invaluable is in times of hardship for a business. Though these times are crippling to any company, this effect can be easily minimized through an accountant. Identifying problems with the business model, market changes, and even sourcing new potential business can save a company, and is an investment well worth its weight in any situation. If the worst does happen, and your business is suffering, a financial adviser is a commodity to be kept, as they can organise payment plans with creditors, and even negotiate on your behalf for better rates.

Many of today’s successful companies use a combination of offline and online marketing strategies.

In fact, while most of us have seen a significant revolution going in favor of online marketing, offline marketing remained alive and well, and is still an effective tool for building brand awareness. Billboard commercials, magazine ads, branded giveaways (e.g. shirts, pens) – you’ll still come across these things nowadays.

The only problem with offline marketing is that it can be unpredictable and sometimes immeasurable. Various approaches range widely in terms of costs (from absolutely free to thousands of dollars) and the amount of effort that you’ll have to put in – from cold calling, to hosting events, to being out in the streets for material distribution. Furthermore, it can really be hard to tell how much of an audience your efforts have reached.

This is where online marketing comes into play.

Alongside technological advancement, the marketing industry has grown considerably in terms of approach and strategy. People went from window-shopping, to browsing products and services on the Internet. Thus, if you have a business, it makes sense to build a strong online presence.

Why You Should Have a Business Website

Having your own website is vital, not just for online visibility and providing information, but also for giving your target audience the impression that you’re a legitimate business.

With more and more consumers searching the Internet for products and services that they need, and with other companies realizing this and putting up their own business websites, you don’t want to get left behind.

The good news is that having a professional-looking website may be easier to accomplish than you might think.

Once you have an idea of how you want your website to represent your business, you can start creating one. For this, you may want to consider getting a paid hosting service to help you set up and maintain a professional-looking site.

Next, choose a domain name (YourBusinessName.com) and a platform, and then add your content and design. Voila! A new website for your business.

Seeking a Professional for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you’re new to online marketing, or if you haven’t heard about it before, SEO (search engine optimization) is a strategy used in online marketing that affects a website’s visibility in search engines. Simply put, it aims to place your business website on the first page of the search results when someone searches for a product or service that you offer.

That being said, aside from having a website which is dedicated to promoting and expanding your business, you also need to consider boosting your site’s ranking in the search engines. This could, however, be somewhat difficult to accomplish if you don’t have the necessary knowledge.

Promoting your products or services on your site is easy once everything’s set up, but promoting your business website might be something that you’ll want to entrust to an SEO professional’s expertise.

An SEO expert does a lot of things that a business owner might not be prepared to spend a lot of time on, like analyzing and reviewing websites, looking into traffic trends, and studying keyword optimization – not to mention that the latter is also likely to be not as skilled.

Yes, search engine optimization can be learned, but good SEO takes time, and lots of knowledge and skills.

In general, businesses do better by utilizing both offline and online marketing strategies for promotion, lead generation, and boosting sales. Online marketing, in particular, needs to be well-executed in order for your business website to appear professional, gain more traffic, and thus become more effective.

Reviewing the state of modern-day marketing it is essential to have the right mix of techniques. This guarantees that all facets are covered to ensure efficient delivery of messages to prospective customers.

Mobile marketing’s impact to the overall marketing strategy depends mainly on how it incorporates into the mix. It must be able to take advantage of the strengths of the marketing plan. It should offer a compelling impact to the overall marketing activity which contributes to the bottom line.

The marketing mix is the fulfillment of the customer needs through reliable use of marketing ideas. It is the thoroughly studied and well-planned technique of utilizing concepts to attain success in product positioning and brand name awareness.

The ideal marketing mix thinks about all possible ideas that can provide cost-efficient results. At the same time use the power of digital devices to gain intelligence on consumer preferences. The details will then be sorted into useful data to strengthen the different marketing strategies
of a particular company.

Getting mobile marketing into the mix poses terrific benefits for your marketing effort. Mobile marketing will become a byword in the future.

There is an increase usage of mobile internet year on year, the same research study stated.

More and more people are amendable on getting offers through mobile as long as the messages are a tailored-fit to their preferences and interests. When utilized artistically it can deliver a winning formula to the marketing mix.

Mobile marketing does not add a lot of bulk expenses to the marketing expense. Expenses of doing mobile marketing are substantially lower compared to other ideas.

The biggest mistake a company can make is to desert all other marketing principles in the mix. Mobile marketing, even with its huge potential, will not fix the marketing troubles of a company.

Actually, there is a need to incorporate mobile marketing into the mix to make it effective. If you do not blend mobile marketing to other ideas you lose the capability to take advantage of its potentials.

Mobile marketing will make it possible for services to end up being creative and innovative in their deals. It is essential for mobile marketing to get into the mix rather than simply a detached idea.

Fine tuning your marketing formula to include a balanced mix of effective methods, including mobile marketing, is essential to a campaign that produces desirable results.In addition to sending messages to peoples mobile phones, there is also a new technology that is starting to make a lot
of noise for local businesses. Its called proximity marketing. Key chain sized proximity marketing beacons can broadcast messages out to potential customers with one hundred yards.

Although early in its inception, this is starting to shift the marketing spend of some major companies. The reason for this is that there is a nominal fixed cost for a certain number of these mobile marketing beacons.This is unlike traditional advertising where you have to keep spending money
to achieve results. Whether you reach a few hundred people or a few thousand people, the proximity beacons are a fixed monthly cost and that cost does not rise based on how many people view your message.

Brands generally rely on marketing to attract consumers, generate sales, and earn profits. When it comes to marketing, printed newsletters, posters, and other similar materials are still effective in spite of the notion that online marketing has killed offline marketing. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why you should choose printed media over online marketing strategies.

For starters, printed media grabs the attention of consumers. These days, newsletters and magazines are no longer commonly sent through mail. Nevertheless, a lot of people still prefer these materials, because they are eye-catching and tangible. A lot of older consumers especially prefer printed media, because its something they can carry around or read as they have coffee, or sit in their living areas.

Printed media also focus on customer retention. Over 60% of marketers produce original content for loyalty and customer retention purposes. In the past, custom printed newsletters and magazines were created by different brands for customer retention.

Today, many marketers forget the importance of nurturing their customers once they are done purchasing. This shouldnt be the case, because making the customer stay is important to guarantee repeat business.

There arent any audience development costs related to print media. Publishers typically spend tons of money and time to qualify their subscribers, to send out magazines. Oftentimes, they have to invest huge amounts of money for every subscriber each year, for the purpose of auditing. They call and send direct mail just so they can say the subscriber has requested their magazines.

This is what happens with controlled trade magazines. Marketers dont have to deal with this issue because they can simply use customer mailing lists whenever they want to send magazines to customers.

Furthermore, what is old is considered as new. IPad apps, social media, and online content are considered to be modern marketing elements. Then again, media buyers and marketers still prefer the traditional way of marketing, which is offline and through printed media.

In fact, they have considered the traditional print channel as something new and different. After all, it isnt like any of the contemporary online marketing strategies used today.

Print media are still the best ones for asking tough questions, and thinking outside the box. Its basically leaning back instead of leaning forward. Print media challenge the customers, and make them excited.

Most people are actually reluctant to participate in interviews for online stories, but they are willing to be featured in print magazines and newsletters. In spite of the popularity of the Internet and online marketing strategies, a lot of people still trust print media and view it as more credible. For them, when someone invests in mail and print, it means that these media are important.

Usually when we speak to customer about a new web design project, web consultant will not propose a website template. Partly because website template may end up looking the same as other website or it can mean the job become much simpler and web design company earn lesser. There are SEO reasons to consider as well. Today, lets look at the reason why this many not be the case anymore.

1. Function is More Important

When we do custom web design, customer usually start to control what they want on the website. They think that they can design a much better website than the designer when they just search around online to find a few good websites. There is a risk that the web designer may not be able to propose a design that will impress the industry. So, in the end, the final work can be a lot different from the original proposal done by the web designer.

With the advancement, website is not easy to update, making the client the web developer themselves after the development. Therefore, web design agency will usually start to do screenshot of the project as reference after they have completed the work instead, to save some embarrassment when client take the website into their own hands.

That is one of the reason template design may have a better-quality control then a custom web design. Template design are fix and usually incur minimal changes to the layout and easier to fulfil. Customer who are worried about the outcome of the website can stop imagining and see it as an almost completed work. What you see is what you get apart from replacing the content with your client’s.

2. Users Don’t Care If Its Custom Design

According to HubSpot survey, 76% of users said that being able to find what users are looking for is the most important rather than the design itself. Only about 10% of users said that appearance was the most important factor to them.

It is important to let your clients know that the website is for your users instead of themselves. The website is supposed to be built to help users find what they are looking for and user experience is top on the list. They also don’t care if its custom or template design. The website should score high on user experience which is readable, usable and other engaging factors that will make them stay longer.

A/B testing is one which will help the site owner determine which design converts the best. If that is okay for the client, then the A/B testing will mean the design appearing differently throughout the 24 hours period so to see which one gets better conversion.

3. Design Follows Function

Having a custom design is more expensive and if that budget can be invested in the function rather than design, your website can convert better. As design to visitor is subconsciously given, but a good decision is usually decided based on ease of functionality and quality of content. Therefore, the client should invest more money on content and function than design. Template designs are designed and tested by industry standard and implementation of the functions and content will make your website ready to rank and convert.

4. Awesome Templates Designs Are Everywhere

Years ago, it is difficult to find good website templates. However, today, there are lots of templates that have awesome design! Many professional web designer design and create themes and templates to sell in one place. Places like “Template Monsters” have superior customer service and good price. Theme design is as good or better than any custom functionality that is great in user experience. These are coded and built with content management system (CMS) Many of these developers provides support and updates too.

There is some part of themes which are not practical to have, those can be removed and make it to your content. These are just because it is usually made with lots of generalization imagine everyone require it.

5. Selling more Web Design Service with Templates

For a web design company, this concept should make your company sell more and uses less time designing a website but focus more on function and profitability.

The reason is as simple as client can see the finished product even before they started on the web design project. What you can add value to us the ability to make the website with functions that will help convert more visitors to paying customer. Making your value an even longer-term service than a short-term web design project.

Reasonable suspicion is when an officer reasonably believes that criminal activity may be occurring by a particular person or persons. The officer has permission to investigate the person(s) as long as if she has an objective suspicion (by looking at the facts) that the individual in question may be engaged in some form of criminal activity. If an officer has reasonable suspicion, then she may detain the suspicious person. The officer may also pat the suspicious person down if she has reasonable belief and fear that the he or she has weapons. While patting the suspect down, the officer may only look for weapons. If during the pat down the officer, based on her training and experience, can feel that the suspect has drugs on her body, the officer may seize the drugs, and arrest the suspect (because at that point, probable cause has developed a higher standard than reasonable suspicion). However, the officer may not intentionally feel for drugs or feel further on the objects on the persons person, in order to see if those objects are drugs.

Should Reasonable Suspicion Be Stricter for Police Officers?

I have mixed feelings about the reasonable suspicion standard. In my opinion, I am not sure if reasonable suspicion is enough to justify approaching a potential suspect. I understand that there has to be a way to question potential suspects. Probable cause will not always exist on its face. I understand that. However, I also feel that reasonable suspicion will be, and has been abused by officers.

There are certain individuals who are going to be reasonably suspicious to officers just by the way that they look. I personally do not even feel that it is always an intentional thing or a racist thing. In fact, I think that it is a fear thing. I think that there are definitely some officers who may be racist or just plain cruel. However, I just think that a lot of them get more scared than anything else.

It is very easy to see someone in a neighborhood that the officer deems as bad, and make incorrect assumptions. As a result of being in that neighborhood, the officer may automatically conclude that reasonable suspicion exists because that person is out too late or looks suspicious outside of a convenience store. Once the officer determines that reasonable suspicion exists, even if it does not, the officer can detain the person and find probable cause to arrest him or her.

How do we know if the officer really had reasonable suspicion, or if he or she was just assuming things based on his or her own insecurities about the neighborhood? How do we know that the officer did more than just a pat down? How do we know that their suspicions were not just based on a physiological bias or fear? That fact of the matter is we dont. That is why I feel that we need a stricter standard for reasonable suspicion. It is too easy for officers to develop reasonable suspicion based on the way that a person looks, or the neighborhood that he or she lives in.

Do you think that reasonable suspicion is enough? Do you think that it is even possible to create a stricter standard for reasonable suspicion? What kind of standard would you create if you could? If you happen to know someone who was wrongfully arrested because of reasonable suspicion, you can contant a bail bonds company to get them out of jail and then the right attorney to fight the case.

Deciding to hire the services of a commercial energy advisor is a very big investment which is why you should take your time when it comes to choosing the right one. Before making the final decision of hiring, it is advisable that you first take the time to ensure that they are the best fit for your company and business. The entire process of researching and hiring also involves the answering a number of questions.

The access to the energy market
A skilled gas brokerage service should be able to easily tell you on the different energy solutions that you can be able to make use of. You should also take the time to learn how quickly these advisors can be able to easily share a short list of their projects depending on the specific criteria that you give them. They should also be able to tell you exactly how they are going to be able to develop this specific criterion. Your company or business will need to have the best deals in regards to how possible its going to be for them in the market. If you cannot be able to find an energy advisor who will be able to provide you with market intelligence and access that is comprehensive, then this may end up working to your disadvantage.

Their track record
Get to ask the commercial energy advisor just how many power purchase agreements they have been able to work with and how many they have been able to help their clients to execute. The energy advisor that you choose to hire and work with should be able to provide you with very detailed information in regards to the size, the number as well as the scope of transactions that they have been able to complete in the energy market. It may also be a good idea for you to find out whether or not they have previously worked with companies that are similar to yours.

Their developer relationships
Any commercial energy advisor should be independent to a point that they are able to only work on behalf of their clients. They have to make sure that the needs of their clients are what always comes first at all times and not their developers needs. Get to find out if the energy advisors are also able to accept some kind of compensation in regards to the influence that the developers may have on the project. You should also ask the financial responsibilities that you as a company or business are going to be required to meet by the energy advisor company you are thinking of hiring. Another important factor for you to understand is the PPA that the energy advisor makes use of.